


Paradise Lost

by Kitchyy



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Mid-Season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 10:53:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3689526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitchyy/pseuds/Kitchyy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are no words to explain the guilt that wracks Hoenheim when he looks at the simple gravestone with Trisha's name on it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradise Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the FMA Fic Contest over at LJ. The prompt was titles of novels and I chose Paradise Lost. (quick aside: I've never read it so I don't know if the novel fits the scope of this fic, but my fingers are crossed that it does.)
> 
> Oh yeah, not mine, never will be, yadda yadda.

There are no words to explain the guilt that wracks Hoenheim when he looks at the simple gravestone with Trisha's name on it. Above and behind him on the rise of the hill his house sits like a monument of his failures: a black smear of ash and rubble against the cloud pocked blue sky. A mirror for the many sins that blackens the tender pieces of his insides. The guilt dogs each step he takes, taints his every waking thought, whispers all his shortcomings and foolhardy naive actions over and over into his ears until all he can hear is the wrongness of his very long life.

And it has been long. Too long. The years stretch out behind him like a late afternoon shadow, impossibly long. A grotesque, misshapen form of the person it's cast by. Hoenheim has seen entire empires birthed and fall, seen countless lives born, seen their faces change from youthful brilliance to frail and aged right before his eyes.

Then there is Hoenheim who is as the sun. A constant, unchangeable thing. He looks the same now as he did the day the dwarf took his soul and twisted it into something unclean and tainted. Something inherently wrong.

If he had only known what he had planned so long ago Hoenheim would have stopped it, or at least tried. He would have connived and planned and fought with every breath and strength he had. Used every option available to him no matter the cost to bring his plan asunder. Immortality is not the gift many think it to be. Especially when it's gifted on the backs of an entire race of innocents.

If only he had known.

He used to get angry when people spoke greedily of immortality. Hoenheim knows with absolute certainty that they know not what they speak. He used to yell, throw his fists in the air, lose his temper at such foolishness, because living forever isn't the blessing one would think. It is a prison sentence with the earth and sky as his cell, and there is no key to bring him freedom. He knows. He's tried. So have others. All with the same result.

He's gotten better about saying nothing when someone talks of living forever. He has learned to rein himself in over the centuries. Instead, he feels with the heartache of a thousand lifetimes his wish to finally age. To grow crows feet, perhaps a gray hair or two. To have his final waking moments surrounded by the people he has loved and laughed with throughout his many long years. Their gentle smiles would ferry him to his undeniable truth - it's his greatest dream, for those are the markers of a life truly lived.

But Hoenheim knows deep down that there is no redemption for him. It is a paradise lost, for how can a man make his peace with himself and the world around him when he knows there is no end to it all? There will be no sunshot grassy hill that will accept his body in years (decades? Centuries? Eons?) to come, no gravestone that will bear his name for his family to remember him by.

His hand travels over the cold stone, tracing the letters of Trisha's name.

Hoenheim will never have that. And life loses that indefinable something that makes it all worth while because of it. Color bleeds out of the world so that all he's left with is a monochrome sepia: everything the same. Entropy in it's cruelest form.

Perhaps that's why he had fallen for Trisha. Her thirst for life was enthralling. She captivated him from the moment he met her, and Hoenheim was helpless but to drink deep of the world with her. Suddenly the clouds held magical far off worlds again, blooming flowers in her little garden were a wondrous miracle, and even the sun was bright again.

Hoenheim would have given her anything she asked it of him, but she never did. She was just happy knowing he was there beside her. She cherished where others took for granted. She loved when others would despise. She loved him wholly with a depth that went soul deep even though he didn't deserve it.

Hoenheim loved her for that. Will always love her for it. He wanted to give her the world in return, but only had himself to give. And so he had.

But time moves differently for Hoenheim than it does for others. He hadn't even blinked or taken stock of this new found world, and suddenly he had a house, a wife and children. A _family_. For the first time since he had been mortal all those long centuries ago, he could feel time like a corporeal thing breathing down his neck – time was slipping through his fingers like so many grains of sand, and he was desperate to hold it in place, just for _right now_ , for _this_ moment, just for _these lives._

But time, it seems, waits for no man, not even Hoenheim. They were all growing so fast – up and older and changing just like everyone else – and it was too much and not enough at the same time–

Because he could feel the dwarf moving his little chess pieces again, preparing for something that echoed sick and dark in Hoenheim's bones.

Suddenly he had something to _lose_.

He should have left and implemented his counter offensive sooner, Hoenheim thinks. Perhaps his sons wouldn't have hated him so much. He would have been some ethereal ghost of their past, shrugged off as a mild curiosity and a vague sense of loss for what they could have had. He should have taken everything he was from his home when he left. Only the features of face and brightness of hair and eyes would be enough to show their relation to each other. It would have been better that way. Easier.

He should have taken his alchemy books.

Edward is too much like Hoenheim. They're both too willing to move heaven and earth for the people they love. And Alphonse has so much of Trisha's kind heart and loving soul that it breaks his. They are such strong, fearfully intelligent beings and he feels a rush of pride at the very thought of them.

But they had no one to lean upon when Trisha became sick and then passed. There was no one to struggle through that loss with them, to tell them how grief works and how it's ok to look behind, as long as they're still moving forward. No one who could rein them in when the horrific idea struck in their too young minds and tell them No when they needed to hear it most.

He should have been the one to do that. To do all those things. He should have been the father they needed when their world collapsed in on them. Taught them right from wrong and how to smile again. Taught them how to grow. How to shave. How to be the type of men that are a thousand times better than him. They deserve that much. They deserve more.

Hoenheim loves them with a ferocity and tenderness that always leaves him a little breathless and a lot off balance.

Instead they had gone too far. They had tried the impossible and destroyed their innocence, thinking that death was just some pesky obstacle they could surmount if given enough time and preparation. And where was he when their universe collapsed in on itself? Off in some back end of the country trying to make sure history didn't repeat itself when his family truly and desperately _needed_ him.

Trisha's dream of a happy family had fallen apart at the seams, and why? Because Hoenheim was scared of losing them.

He laughs then, a hollow, bitter sound and lays the single flower – a daisy, because they were her favorite – on her grave and steps back, ignoring the few salty drops that land in the grass at the foot of the granite slab.

Hoenheim's heard the cliché saying about the road to hell and its good intentions. It's a trite platitude for the cold weight that sits like a stone in his belly.

There are simply no words to explain the guilt that wracks Hoenheim.

 


End file.
